1. Field
The present disclosure relates to copy and/or data management operations in a computer network and, in particular, to systems and methods for performing data replication in a storage management system.
2. Description of the Related Art
Computers have become an integral part of business operations such that many banks, insurance companies, brokerage firms, financial service providers, and a variety of other businesses rely on computer networks to store, manipulate, and display information that is constantly subject to change. Oftentimes, the success or failure of an important transaction may turn on the availability of information that is both accurate and current. Accordingly, businesses worldwide recognize the commercial value of their data and seek reliable, cost-effective ways to protect the information stored on their computer networks.
Many approaches to protecting data involve creating a copy of the data, such as backing up and/or replicating data on one or more storage devices. Data shadowing and mirroring, or duplexing, provide for copying but can require substantial amounts of time, processing power and/or storage space, especially for large databases. Moreover, such storage management systems can have a significant adverse impact on the performance of the source or primary system.
To address these drawbacks, certain systems perform replication operations that copy less than an entire volume of data to a desired location. For example, differential replication operations are used to copy all files that have changed since a last full replication of the data. Moreover, incremental replication operations can be used to copy all files that have changed since the most recent full, differential or incremental replication. These techniques, however, can require a significant amount of processing power or network bandwidth, especially when dealing with changes to relatively large files or databases.